A reflection on the hypothesis that briefly detonated across astronomy and palaeontology.

Nemesis follows physicist Richard Muller’s attempt to explain an apparent 26-million-year cycle in mass extinctions. The proposed culprit was extraordinary. Apparently, the culprit an unseen companion star to the Sun whose orbit might periodically disturb the distant comet reservoir and send debris toward Earth.

Muller writes about false starts, seductive mathematics, rivalry, intuition and how eventually, you may need to murder a beautiful theory if you can't get it to hold. The passages on experimental physicist Luis Alvarez I loved, as they look at the strange combination required for discovery. You must entertain the absurd, then become absolutely merciless about evidence. The Nemesis hypothesis itself has not become an accepted explanation for periodic extinction, but the book remains a lively case study in speculative science and the machinery by which ideas survive, mutate or die.

Mandarin Paperbacks, London, 1990. Paperback. First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann in 1989; this Mandarin edition 1990. Light edge and cover wear, with minor rubbing and handling marks. Pages lightly toned but clean; binding firm. Very good condition.